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Review: Little waste one hundred years ago

By JOHN BELL

Vast resources of timber were available to shipbuilders in the US during
the 19th century. This huge surplus of wood stimulated the first manufacture
of cheap goods that could be thrown away instead of repaired or used in
a worn state. Technology in America, edited by Carroll Pursell (MIT, pp
319, £10.75 pbk), says that Americans thought little of waste a hundred
years ago. They invented fast, efficient saws that created more sawdust
than traditional designs, and did not last as well. The ‘replacement economy’,
better known as planned obsolescence, was born.

The book consists of a series of well-written essays about 21 scientists
and technologists who helped to make the US what it is today. Besides being
a good read, the cameos are a reminder that the US went through an industrial
revolution every bit as important as the events in 18th and 19th-century
Europe. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, was an intermediary between
the foremost scientists on both sides of the Atlantic. He also founded the
US Patent Office.

The Yorkshire engineer Benjamin Latrobe knew James Watt and other engineers,
and transferred many ideas about steam technology to the US. Around the
same time, Eli Whitney developed the idea of manufacture with interchangeable
parts, the start of modern mass production. Then there was Cyrus McCormick
whose reaping machine (see photo) mechanised American agriculture, Frederick
Taylor who laid down the principles of scientific management, Henry Ford
who made cars popular and Frederick Terman whose vision in the 1930s led
to what is now known as Silicon Valley.